[CentOS] Trouble (?) reformatting flash drive to include former U3 partition

MHR mhullrich at gmail.com
Mon Jun 15 21:01:03 UTC 2009


On Mon, Jun 15, 2009 at 8:14 AM, Robert
Nichols<rnicholsNOSPAM at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> Sure.  I'll try it as a small attachment here.  It that doesn't
> work, and I suspect it won't, I'll have to find some spot where
> I can upload it.  I don't have anything like that set up just now.
>

Got it - thanks.

One thing I noticed when I formatted the drive with the 31/31/99212
format was that it was REALLY REALLY SLOW!

I don't really know enough about the driver for USB flash drives, but
I would bet it has something to do with the high cylinder count, and I
noticed the Sandisk's format, though short by 77+MB seems to be
optimized for real disk drive timings - maximum sectors per track,
maximum heads per cylinder, minimum cylinders.  In a real disk drive,
this is wise because the inter-cylinder seek time is the longest
(switching sectors is usually trivial, and switching heads is not much
more).

If that's true, the the "most" optimum format for this drive would be
124/31/24803.  Of course, that "loses" 124 sectors for the MBR, but
that a whale of a lot less than 77MB.

I could be totally wrong about this - haven't tested it yet.

One last question, which I believe I did ask originally but didn't see
any answer - anyone know why the Kingston is larger than the Sandisk
(probably just designed that way - bravo, Kingston!)?

Thanks to all!

mhr



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